Juno: Movie Review (2007)

Directed by Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody, 95 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Jason Reitman movie, "Juno," was written by Diablo Cody, real name Brook Busey-Hunt, a former professional stripper who left the pole for the ways of the pen.

That's great news for mainstream audiences--her smart, engaging script is one of the year’s best, particularly in terms of dialogue, which is charged with wit, surprise and mischief--but perhaps not such good news for her former client base.

After seeing "Juno," one suspects that Cody won't be returning to the world of burlesque anytime soon. She is somebody who has stories to tell, with a natural gift to tell them, and there only are so many stories one can tell to an audience that only wants to pay for them $1 at a time.

"Juno" stars Ellen Page (“Hard Candy”) in a star-making performance as Juno MacGuff, a precocious, ultra-hip 16-year-old high-school student who makes the decision that she's going to put an end to her virginity and have sex with Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera of "Superbad"), a bright yet shy young man who favors his orange-flavored Tic Tacs and long-distance running almost as much as he favors Juno herself.

On a sad-looking, dilapidated chair, they have their moment, which initially appears unremarkable until two months and four days later, Juno realizes just how remarkable it really was. There isn't a pregnancy test stick in town that she can't turn positive, so the question now is how best to deal with her pregnancy?

Should she abort the child, or should she offer it up to parents who might come to love and nurture it, such as wealthy suburbanites Vanessa (Jennifer Grant) and Mark (Jason Bateman), who shimmer with initial promise? Though Juno is one cool kid, greasing over the complications as if there weren't any at hand, she herself admits in a rare moment of weakness that she’s dealing “with things way beyond my maturity level.”

And that’s the thing about Juno. Though she’s armed with a sophistication way beyond her years, she’s still, at heart, just a child dealing with the burden of her own unborn child. Helping her through the highs, lows and dark humor she finds in the situation are her father and step-mother (J.K Simmons and Allison Janney, superb), her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) and then, unexpectedly, Mark himself, who finds in Juno something of a soul mate, which complicates the movie considerably.

As Juno’s hormones rage and her belly balloons (“I’m a planet!”), her vulnerability begins to show in ways that takes the movie down a notch from the quirky humor it favors during its electric first half. As such, it becomes more human and real. This is critical to the film’s success because the film, which initially seems as if it might only exist to serve its splendid dialogue, comes to serve its characters, who resonate long after Reitman and Cody deliver their final twist.

Grade: A-